She called a lawyer whose name she had on a card from a woman at church who had divorced a kind man for a quieter crime.
She did not call Patrick until evening.
“I have the week,” she said. “Do not protect him.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Do not protect me either. I am not a surprise party.”
“Okay.”
After she hung up she stood in the dining room with the gold balloons still up because taking them down required a ladder and a decision about whether the party had happened. It had happened. She left the balloons. They would sag. Sagging was accurate.
Christine Vale learned from a missed weekend.
Frank did not arrive on the Friday he had said he would. She called. He did not answer. She called again. On Sunday night he answered from a hotel and said Margaret knew.
Christine sat down on the floor of the duplex kitchen with her back against the cabinet.
She was fifty-eight. She had spent thirty years taking the parts of Frank that fit in a drawer and a calendar. She had met Matthew and Josh’s teachers as a single mother with a boyfriend who traveled. She had told the boys the truth in pieces: Frank is married; he is your father; do not show up at his other house. The boys had grown up with a father who came for cakes and left before Monday.
Matthew, twenty-eight, said, “So we’re the surprise at his party.”
Josh said, “Pat. That’s the son’s name. I looked him up once.”
Christine said, “Do not call that house.”
Matthew said, “I’m not going to call that house. I’m going to be angry in this house.”
Frank drove to Dayton on the fourth day of the week Margaret had given him. Christine did not let him past the inner door.
“You had a party,” she said.